Tag Archives: Sewing

Lots of hospital and doctor’s appointments of late so haven’t been able to post this sooner. It’s not a big project just a little something I made to keep my needles in and to practice embroidery stitches. I’ve been following Take A Stitch Tuesday over at Pin Tangle and wanted a small sample book to do my stitches in so this is what I made.

It’s not great but it’s good enough just to practice in. I started by cutting the felt 10cm x 20cm and folding it to make a spine of sorts.

I then made the ‘pages’ for the inside by cutting 5 pieces of white cotton 11cm x 21cm and hemmed the edge with the sewing machine. I would advise either hemming with wonderweb or some other kind of n0 sew tape or just overlocking the edge, that’d probably be MUCH easier than what I did. Let me tell you, I’m a total noob at sewing and I probably should have had a larger allowance but it just seemed a bit big and messy doing a 1cm allowance. My mistake.

So once all the swearing and hemming was done I pressed a fold in my cotton pieces and sewed the spine. I used embroiderer’s thread to do this because I wanted a nice bright colour.

There it is, one little stitching booklet and now I have somewhere to put all my little stitches. 🙂

Last weekend I went to the caravan in Porthmadog with my parents. The weekend was a bit of a washout in the end, but as I lay in my tent praying to god that the pouring rain, which had turned the ground beneath me into a torrent of mud, wouldn’t get in, I was comforted by the fact that I had found roughly three metres of beautiful blue paisley fabric for £3!

As it turns out, most charity shops in my area are a bit rubbish when it comes to fabric and anything that might be handy for sewing, but Barmouth, despite being full of the type of people I try my best to avoid, is awesome! Mum found some nice Sirdar wool for 50p and I found a basket full of fabric. Seriously, it was a goldmine and I hadn’t brought my pick. I had spent all my money the week before in London so mum bought the paisley for me and I left behind metres of lovely English Tweed, blue calico and some nice 70’s print pillow cases which I had my eye on to make a summer top with. We didn’t realise how large the piece of fabric was until we got home on Sunday, three metres long and just over half a metre wide, it hadn’t looked that large when it was rolled up tight. We also noticed that it was partly discoloured, as you can see in the picture. I’m not overly concerned with this though, I think it’s only about a half a metre or less, probably where it’s been folded and left in the light, I can work around it I think.

What to do with it though? I’m going on holiday to Lanzarote in September and would like something new to wear. I’m thinking of a maxi dress, because I’m very short I wouldn’t use too much I think, either that or a midi skirt or a tunic… so many options, I probably could do at least two because I also have about a metre and half of check cotton I picked up in the John Lewis sale for £3.50 a metre so that might work for a tunic or skirt. Ho hum, decisions decisions.